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[[?]] HE BALLOON "R[[?]]
[[?]] of "revival" in balloon [[?]]
brought about within a week or two by the promise of an attempt to cross the Atlantic from Boston to Europe in an aerial ship, about the Fourth of July next. We use the word "promise" without intention to slight the pending project, but in remembrance of two enterprises of the kind which were promised and not performed. One of theses "promises" was made in our own city, but after many weeks of talk and preparation, which latter proceeded so far as to inflate the trans-Atlantic balloon, the project fell through. There was another in a neighboring State, which came to the same inglorious end. The Boston affair, we hope, may produce better results; but still we have no strong expectations of it. It has good backing, however, for the City corporation of Boston has appropriated three thousand dollars towards securing the success of the enterprise.
  The theory of the authors of this project is the old, yet still undemonstrated hypothesis, that in the upper regions of our atmosphere there is a constant current of air setting from the west to the east and moving at a rate of thirty to sixty miles an hour. There is some ground for this theory in the experience of several balloonists who have encountered such a current, but there is not enough known about the matter to enable anyone to determine whether such a current is at all constant. This being the case, it is not a little strange that those of our American balloonists who, on the strength of their professed faith in the westerly current, have proposed to make a three thousand mile journey across the ocean, have never undertaken a test of the existence and constancy of the current by making the far less perilous  preliminary trial of a three thousand mile flight over land-say from San Francisco to Philadelphia, or even to Pittsburg [[Pittsburgh]], Cincinnati or St.Louis. This would be a far more feasible thing, and it could be done with vastly less risk than the trans-ocean voyage through the air. It would have the additional advantage of testing another unsettled point, viz., the length of time during which a balloon filled with gas can retain its buoyant power.. It is thought that three days may suffice to make the trip, and so they would, at forty to forty-five miles an hour; but it has never yet been demonstrated that a balloon can retain its buoyant power under the alternations of heat and cold in the high regions of the upper atmosphere, during day and night, for seventy-two consecutive hours. This is so important a matter to determine, as well as the constancy of the westerly current, as to make it quite remarkable that no effort has been made to test the matter where it can be safely tested, over the thirty-three hundred miles of land between the Pacific and the Atlantic. 
  The truth is that very little scientific investigation has been brought to bear on this question of aeronautics. It is about ninety years since Montgolfier succeeded in his balloon experiments, and down this time the sold control that has been acquired over the motion of the balloon is the power to make it ascend or descend at will, one being accomplished by throwing out "ballast," and the other by permitting the gas to escape. The success of the Montgolfiers and Rozier in 1783 was eagerly welcomed by men of science in their day, and they tried to turn the balloon to useful account. But having failed to realize their expectations, it passed into the hands of adventurers and "showmen." A few men of somewhat higher grade of intellect have taken it in hand, but, their attempts at investigation having been merely empirical, they amounted to nothing. Pre-eminent about these, however, was Guy-Lussac, who twice in the year 1804 made balloon ascensions for the purpose of observing the effects of great altitudes on the magnetic needle, and also to test the quality of the atmosphere at great heights above the earth. But even his scientific experiments were of little value. He ascended to vast heights of twenty-three thousand and forty feet, (more than four and a third miles), nearly sixteen hundred feet above the highest known mountain peak on the earth. When he started from Paris the temperature was 82 degrees, when he reached his highest altitude the thermometer was down to less than 15 degrees; but the vibrations of the needle and the constituents of the atmosphere remained about the same. Since then the principal uses of the balloon, (except among the "showmen,") have been for military reconoissances [[reconnaissances]] in time of war; and during the recent Franco-German campaign to carry small budgets of letters and a few adventurous passengers, and messengers from Paris over the lines of the besieging forces around that city. These are really useful purposes, and the pity is that other equally useful duties have not been found for the aerial machine. We are among those who believe it has far higher capacities than have yet been got out of it, but they will never be developed until the subject is taken in hand by capable men, who, aided by sufficient money, will pursue the inquiry of ascertaining the constancy of the upper air currents, and of constructing a manageable aerial ship, with systematic persistency, and scientific as well as mechanical skill.